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It feels so good to be discussing this,' Victoria Rue tells me, the note
of mischief clear in her Californian drawl. 'Officially the Vatican has
decreed that Catholics can't even talk about women priests, let alone
ordain them, but here we are doing it.'

You can't even talk about women priests?! Than why is that all we seem to hear about in some quarters of the Catholic Church? Heck, even Ignatius Press has published a 497-page book about "women priests", Fr. Manfred Hauke's Women In The Priesthood (1988), which systematically, carefully, and fairly explains why the Church does not, can not, and will not ordain women to be priests. Please, be done with the silly and disingenuous stance of "Oh, we just ordained some women as Catholic priests, but the Vatican won't acknowledge them." No, you aren't "doing it." You're playing games and looking like fools in the process. But Stanford is more than willing to go along for the ride, coyly noting that "Rue, professor of religion at San Jose State University, California, looks and sounds every inch a Catholic cleric" (because, of course, it's a matter of looks):

In July 2005, she was ordained as one of the world's first Catholic
women priests. On Saturday she is in Britain to say mass in Leeds with
members of Britain's 300-strong Catholic Women's Ordination movement.
The service will take place in an Anglican church because, in the eyes
of the Vatican, Rue, 59, is not a priest. It has responded to the
ordinations of a handful of American, German, Austrian and South
African women with threats of excommunication.

The "eyes of the Vatican" here is nice and purposefully limiting phrase. Make that "in the eyes of the Catholic Church," from the pope to the Catholic girl next door who loves Jesus and doesn't think it insulting or demeaning that only men are ordained, just as she doesn't find it peculiar that a lowly Jewish girl was chosen to be the only mother of God. Meanwhile, Stanford keeps referring to women preparing to become "Catholic priests," which sounds eerily like those men who are preparing "to be become" women because, well, they've always felt like they were supposed to be women.

Not surprisingly, we are told that Rue follows the common blueprint for Catholic priestettes: disgrunted former nun who is now a lesbian and who rejects large chunks of Catholic teaching.

Victoria Rue tried life as a nun in the late Sixties but then turned
her back on the church to work in the theatre. A trip to Central
America in the Eighties brought her back into contact with Catholicism.
Seeing it operating alongside the poor in the slums of Nicaragua
inspired her to take up studying theology. At college she met her
partner, Kathryn Poethig.

Rue was back as a regular mass-attender
but felt excluded by her gender and her sexual orientation from more
traditional forms of Catholic liturgy. She began taking part in and
leading an unofficial 'women's mass' in Oakland, California. That
experience confirmed her vocation and eventually led her to seek
'ordination' last year.

So she attends an "unofficial" (read: not real!) liturgy and seeks "ordination" (read: not real!). The air of unreality only intensifies when Stanford makes a pathetic pass at explaining why the Catholic Church does not, in reality, ordain women:

But Rome has been forced on to the defensive by the large numbers of
women now studying theology and realising that Catholicism does not
really have a decent argument against women's ordination. According to
the Vatican, the issue is that women were not at the Last Supper.
However, since we have no real evidence who was at the Last Supper,
this can scarcely be regarded as a knockout blow.

With theological acumen like that, Stanford should consider becoming a journalist! Oh, wait, he already is. Anyhow, it's worth noting that Fr. Hauke's book, which, in the interest of fairness and integrity, presents arguments for women's ordination more cogently than those interviewed for Stanford's piece, spends all of two paragraphs (out of nearly 500 pages) on the Last Supper, and that in the larger context of Jewish culture and how Jesus' attitude toward women was actually rather revolutionary. Suffice to say that Hauke is very familiar with feminist arguments and attitudes; his other Ignatius Press book is God or Goddess? (1995), a 350-page critique of feminist theology. An excerpt can be read here.

Finally, Stanford ends his piece of "journalism" on this highly objective note:

On Saturday, Rue will try to put some balm on the wounds. As she stands
on the altar, she will be a walking, talking reproach to the
foolishness of a group of men who believe that they can simply order
those who disagree with them to be silent and fall into line with a
teaching that has almost no theological or historical basis. Inspired
by the changes afoot in Anglicanism, Catholic women with a vocation are
no longer in the mood to put up and shut up.

Hmmmm--"Inspired
by the changes afoot in Anglicanism." If that isn't one of the most cheerless and uninspiring battle cries around, I don't know what is. As for the lack of "theological and historical basis," perhaps Stanford should spend less time at seances and more time reading works of real history and theology.

Comments

Carl wrote: "Inspired by the changes afoot in Anglicanism." If that isn't one of the most cheerless and uninspiring battle cries around, I don't know what is.....So true.

I feel no pleasure in witnessing the final disintegration of Anglicanism, as inevitable as that end has been ever since Henry VIII tortured five Carthusians to death for refusing to applaud the birth of his caeseropapist order. While a single ailment can set the body on a course for death, actual death usually features pan-systemic failure as a host of problem beset the dying one. That's what I see unfolding in the collapse of Anglicanism, a complete unravelling of its fabric into something unrecognizable as Christian. And, pace its acceptance of contraception before my time, it has more or less come about in a single generation. Amazing.

Still, I think it ironic that the coup de grace is being delivered by its plunge into the "ordination" of women as bishops. Anglicans qua Anglicans, Leo XIII told us a century ago, can't even ordain men as priests, so why are they trying to ordain women as bishops?

As distressing as it is to observe from afar the apparent decision by the hierarchy of the Anglican Communion to self destruct, almost like watching the final burnout of a large, outdated ediface, nevertheless there is a bright side. As the Anglican sheep are separated from the goats we can certainly look forward to the possibility, if not the probability, of a significant exodus of traditionalist (in the sacramental and liturgical sense of that much abused word) into full communion with the Roman Catholic Church. This will occur, no doubt, on an individual basis but also in other ways yet not foreseen.
The Holy Spirit, working through individuals, will use this sad event as an opportunity for evangilization and reconciliation.

I am convinced that what seems to be the vast majority of people really don't care about authority. They only care about making themselves feel good. Instead of seeking out the Truth and having obedience to it, they seek to find the combination of peculiar doctrines that best enables them to feel good about their present state without requiring any real reflection on one's distance from the Truth or requiring any change to oneself.

A lot of this is fruit of the Reformation, I believe. When I was wondering around in Protestantism, I would go from church to church because there is such a variety of them and I would want to belong to the one that fit my own beliefs that I interpreted for myself in the Scripture. See, everyone thinks they are fit to be their own theologian. At least there are some that are truly open to gleaning an objective Truth from the Scriptures and try to conform themselves to it rather than the other way around. But I'm afraid many do not want to confront themselves or admit they might be wrong and instead try to conform their reading of Scripture to themselves. In any event, what persuaded me to return to the Catholic Church was that I was convinced of its authority. It was not because I found the Church's doctrine to fit my understanding of Scripture. It is because I became convinced that my Lord had given all authority to this Body and that I ought to be obedient to it. If there are areas where I don't come to the same conclusion as the Church, then the problem lies with me, not with the Church. And prayer and study within the orthodox teaching of the Church is the only way to remedy that.

When Jesus talked about the faith of children, I think that is the correct attitude we need to maintain. We need to be curious, but also teachable. And we need to love and respect our Mother the Church as a child does. What kind of child tells its Mother that she needs to change? Far too many, I'm afraid.

I --for one-- did not say it was sad, I only said I take no pleasure in it. There's a tree in our yard, shattered by an ice storm some years ago. One large, mostly severed, branch has continued to blossom and leaf each year since, though gradually less and less. It is doomed of course, and the kids have asked me when I'm going to chop it out. "Not till it's dead", I say. Till then, it still gives cover to rabbits and offers nesting to robins. It's not a good analogy, I know. Maybe CS Lewis could offer a better one.

When my kids make statements such as those made by Stanford and Rue, I correct them. Not in the disciplinary sense but in the educational sense. I don't allow my kids to persist in ignorant communication or philosophy. My kids have an advantage over Stanford and Rue however, they don't desire to be rebellious. They actually want to be on the side of truth. Rue and Stanford just sound like that spoiled girl from Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. For your comparison I'll put a Veruca Salt (WW spoiled girl) conversation from the movie along with an "imaginary" conversation between Rue and her sympathiser.

Veruca Salt- Hey, Daddy, I want an Oompa Loompa. I want you to get me an Oompa Loompa right away.

Mr. Salt- All right, Veruca, all right. I'll get you one before the day is out.

Veruca- I want an Oompa Loompa now!!!

Violet Beauregarde- Can it, you nit!!
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Victoria Rue- Hey, dissident theologian, I want to be a priest. I want to be made a priest right away.

Dissident- All right, Veronica, All right. I'll get you to be one before the decade is over.

All of this brings me back once more to St. John’s Gospel. ”In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.”
Hillary Clinton once said that “words mean things.” Given her political/ideological background that was not as "duh" a statement as it first appears. The thrust of much of the feminist and gay agendas is the re-definition of words. For a relativist, this is easily done, but the reason it is important to the gay movement, for example in the definition of marriage, is precisely because words have authority. A meaning is a truth, and nothing is more authoritative than truth. Thus, a redefinition seems to them a way of stating a truth, and in popular culture and practice, for the most part they are right. So that by re-defining the word from the union of a man and a woman, to the union of two adults, shazam! They have a new truth.
In essence that is the reality underlying the push to ordain women in the Catholic Church. They are trying mightily to redefine the priesthood and ultimately to redefine Catholic. We might ask, if they reject large chunks of Catholic dogma, why they don’t just either create a new ecclesial body or join the Anglicans where their views are welcome. Using definitions once more, we can say that they, by belief, are really no longer Catholic. And by their own rhetoric on diversity and tolerance we could say that they should respect the dogmas of the Catholic Church to be what they are, and leave. It has been done before. Ask Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, et al.
They have their own ready answers as to why they want to remain Catholic, but underlying all of it is this. Authority. Regardless of how much the world around attacks the Catholic Church for this or that, no matter how critical and vitriolic the reformers have been and sometimes still are, no matter how derisive the progressives in the gay and lesbian movement and the feminist movement are about the “antiquated ideas and beliefs” of the Catholic Church, deep down, underlying all of that, is the recognition, subconscious in many if not most cases, that the Catholic Church speaks for Jesus Christ here on earth. If you want God’s approval, God’s authority, God’s stamp on your life, ideas and lifestyle, it has to come from the Catholic Church. Period.